Sony documents leak, reveal release dates and emulation plans

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Sega’s FTP security needs a bit of work after confidential documents from a meeting held with Sony at the beginning of August were acquired from the company’s FTP. Gamers won’t be complaining though, as the docs contain some juicy release information and plans for the PS3.

Top of the list is the fact Sony’s motion controller is planned to be released in March 2010 with some healthy or optimistic predictions of up to 5 million sales. With that information appearing at a Sega meeting it is safe to assume that we can expect some Sega games to appear supporting the new controller and Virtua Tennis is mentioned specifically.

With the release of the PS3 Slim and the total lack of backwards compatibility for PS2 games it would be fair to think Sony no longer cares about playing its older games on the PS3. But that doesn’t seem to be the case as the documents also detail plans to release a PS2 emulator. Although it doesn’t actually state that this would be available to gamers directly, instead allowing for all PS2 games to appear on the PlayStation Network for sale.

Other interesting things to pull out of the notes are Sony and Sega talking about releasing Dreamcast games on the service. Which ones are dependent on what Sony wants. And probably most interesting of all is Sony is considering a Japanese gaming section for PSN. This would see more Japanese games available in digital form with just subtitles and interface updates for the English language. The games mentioned specifically for this section were the Yakuza titles carrying a price of between $9.99-$39.99 each.

For me its the last part of the document that is the most exciting. Gaining access to a back catalog of Dreamcast games through my PS3 would be fantastic and I just hope Sony aren’t too selective with the games it chooses – I want them all.

As for the Japanese gaming section that has the potential to be huge. All those titles that never see a release in the West due to the expected limited market for a game, the cost of getting dialog translated, and the cost of marketing, could now see regular releases due to much lower risk. Subtitles and menu updates is all that is required and we could have a lot of obscure and fun additional games to play. If that just means shmups to begin with I won’t be complaining.

I think the motion controller was expected next year anyway, we just didn’t know exactly when to expect it. March gives Sega enough time to update a game to either bundle with it or ship alongside, but I doubt we will see anything new and innovative right away.

Thankfully I got a 60GB PS3 that plays PS2 games, but I hope Sony release the PS2 emulator to use with the games you already own as I know that’s what a lot of gamers want, and it’s what I would want if I ever buy a Slim.